Change of Time
by tinlizzie82
Summary: Expanded scenes from Rise inspired by the lyrics of the Josh Ritter song that titles this story.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** This story came about because the day after seeing the season premiere I was thinking about it when Change of Time came up on my ipod. Since then I can't hear the song without also picturing the episode. Given that they have already used another Josh Ritter song for a pivotal moment (Come and Find Me, hotel door scene in To Live and Die in LA) it seemed appropriate so I decided to see if I could make it work for a retelling of parts of Rise. Each verse will preface a chapter and forgive me for the sometimes florid prose as I attempt to work the songs imagery into the story.

_**Change of Time - Josh Ritter**_

_I had a dream last night_

_I dreamt that I was swimming_

_And the stars up above_

_Directionless and drifting_

_Somewhere in the dark_

_Were the sirens and the thunder_

_And around me as I swam_

_The drifters who'd gone under_

_Time, love_

_Time, love_

_Time, love_

_It's only a change of time_

* * *

><p>Castle stirred slightly in his sleep, letting out a slight moan as his reflexively clutching hand knocked a pen off the desk blotter that was currently serving as his pillow. His sleep was uneasy and not just from the lack of a bed. In fact, he was frightened of the deeper slumber a bed might bring, frightened of the nightmares that bloomed every time he closed his eyes. For three days he had driven himself, spending all his time at the precinct hunting for Beckett's shooter alongside Esposito and Ryan, returning home only to change clothes and get the cold showers and hot coffee that he was substituting for actual rest.<p>

But even the most tortured mind can only hold out for so long and his body had begun to succumb at odd moments, dozing off while riding in the squad car, eyes closing when sitting in the break room waiting for his thousandth cup of expresso to brew, even once, embarrassingly, nodding off propped up against the corner of the elevator and nearly falling down, much to the amusement of the other riders. Now, with the squad room quiet and the leads running out, his body shut down while his brain drifted wildly through the darkness.

It was like an unending newsreel, as colorless and grainy as a Vietnam war era documentary and just as violent. Over and over, he catches the glint of light from the rifle out in the distance. Over and over, he lunges towards Beckett, each time thinking he's been fast enough and each time gasping as he sees the blood spreading across her blouse, pooling dark and inky beneath his hands. Over and over, he relives the fear, the desperation, and then his words. _ I love you, Kate._

But this was where the dreams varied. Sometimes it happened just as it had at the graveyard, he called to her and then her eyes closed without giving him any indication if she had heard him, no idea if, at that moment, she was even capable of registering what those four words meant. But other times he wasn't quick enough and found himself professing his feelings to a Beckett who had already gone under, repeating them time and again until they became a sort of dirge for what he had lost. Worse yet were the times she did hear and looked away, her drift into unconsciousness an escape from his emotion. And then, as the dream sirens began to blare and his heart thundered in his chest, she died. No matter what he did or what he said, in every dream she always died.

Of course, he knew she was alive. Yes, she was still in intensive care but her prognosis had been improving daily. She would live, but ... and there was the rub. But. Had she heard, did she remember, what would happen now? Why did it feel like the answer to those questions might just be the death of him?

Finally, the ringing of his phone brought him out of his tortured dreams. As he blearily blinked himself awake, not yet sure of his surroundings, he instinctively looked over towards Beckett's desk. Empty. If he had hoped to find reassurance there, it was not to be. Then, with a sigh, he answered the phone.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: I realized I forgot a disclaimer and since I am quoting both a song and lines from the show I figure it would behoove me to note that I do not own either Change of Time or Castle. But I can always dream ...**

_I had a dream last night_

_And rusting far below me_

_Battered hulls and broken hardships_

_Leviathan and lonely_

_I was thirsty so I drank_

_And though it was salt water_

_There was something 'bout the way_

_It tasted so familiar_

_Time, love_

_Time, love_

_Time, love_

_It's only a change of time_

* * *

><p>In the end, he resisted the urge to run straight to her hospital room, disheveled and drained from his three day marathon waiting for word that he could see her. He wasn't sure if he thought that flowers, clean clothes, and a shave would somehow influence her or if he was just delaying the moment of truth. Nonetheless, he could feel his heart clogging his throat as he gave his hair a final pat, pasted his best laissez-faire smile on his face and pushed open the door to her ward.<p>

What he saw stopped him in his tracks. Josh was there, holding her hand as he bent over a Beckett who seemed somehow reduced, smaller and fragile, as if much of the confidence, the determination that made her seem larger than life, had been let out of her body along with the blood they released from her chest.

Josh gave him an unfriendly glance but with a last murmured word and a brief kiss on the top of her head, he left and they were alone. For a moment Castle just stood there. Although a weak smile played across her lips, Kate's eyes, huge and dark in a face thinned out by trauma, regarded him warily. His questions were there, waiting just behind his lips but he couldn't quite bring himself to utter them, choking out a bit of his trademark foolish banter instead, anything to ease the pain he saw in her eyes.

And then she did smile and he was beside her. And he would have sworn it was just like it had always been between them, light and easy, except for the almost overpowering urge he had to gather her into his arms and never let go. Who could call him a coward for wanting just a few moments more of this before he ventured into the battered shipwreck he feared his declaration in the graveyard might have made of their relationship.

She spoke before he could gather his courage. Her words, though they made all the difference in the world, were tossed off so lightly he almost missed their implication.

"I hear that you tried to save me."

He gave a deprecatory smile and started to shrug it off , but then the real meaning sank in.

"You heard?" he asked. "You don't remember me tackling you?"

She looked off to the side as if trying to conjure up images out of a foggy memory and told him she didn't remember the shooting at all. But he noticed she couldn't meet his eyes and he had to be sure.

"You don't remember ..." he started to press her, but she finally looked back at him and her wordless pleading was more than he could take, "...the gunshot," he finished lamely.

"They say there are some things that are better not being remembered," she told him sadly. In his chest he could feel his heart break open just a little bit wider.

But he knew. Somewhere deep inside himself, he knew she was hiding like a child who pulls the covers over her head, thinking that somehow not seeing the monster in the room will keep her safe. Maybe she didn't remember, maybe she just didn't want to. It didn't matter, her words made it clear that their unspoken, or unheard, feelings would remain beneath the waves. Hidden but waiting as they treaded water above it.

He would do what she asked; he would give her time. He was good at waiting. And if the occasional, unwary moment found a tear escaping him as he sat alone in his study or haunted the precinct, waiting day after day for her, it would be okay. It was what he had always done, just another hardship to endure, and the salty taste of loneliness was familiar on his tongue.


	3. Chapter 3

_The black clouds I'm hanging_

_This anchor I'm dragging_

_The sails of memory rip open in silence_

_We cut through the lowlands_

_All hands through the saltlands_

_The white caps of memory_

_Confusing and violent_

* * *

><p>Kate shed her own fair share of tears over the next few months. First they fell in the hospital as she discovered the extent of her weakness, then when she realized she couldn't work her case, and finally as she sat there in her father's cabin, alone with all the memories she had dragged along with her. Memories that kept her stagnant and stationary; ghosts who left her unwilling to move forward and unable to go back.<p>

And so she dove into the sea of her memories and tried to sort through the confused cacophony of wishes and regrets they brought with them. She tried to make sense of all the deaths, from the ones like Lockwood or McCallister that she couldn't find it in herself to regret, to Montgomery, whose passing she would mourn for the rest of her life. And then her mother, whose death had started something that nearly ended Kate's own life, and not just with a bullet. That had become abundantly clear in those last moments in the graveyard.

Because, despite what she had led everyone to believe, she remembered it all. Castle's lunge, the hot bloom of the bullet in her chest, his words, and the feeling that she was drowning in more than just her own blood. It was his words, acknowledged or not, that made her want to live. Really live, not just stay alive. They gave her a glimpse of a future she had forgotten was possible, a future with more than ghosts for company. She knew she couldn't go on the way she had. She couldn't go back to New York, at least not until she found a way out of the emotional desert she had built around herself. So she invited her ghosts in, took their hands and slowly, so very slowly, began the walk out of the lowlands of her life.

In the end, walking, actual walking, was something she did a lot of as she healed. Over the next two months she became familiar with the lanes and paths surrounding her father's cabin as, sun or clouds, wind and rain, she walked herself back to health and back to some semblance of sanity.

One recovery mirrored the other. When a simple stroll around the yard left her breathlessly clutching her side and the mere thought of Montgomery's last moments made her want to crawl back into her hole and never come out, she tackled the easy stuff. Josh. The child in her wailed at the thought of losing his simple and safe companionship but she knew she could never give him what he wanted, mostly since he could never be what she wanted. At any given moment he might be what she _needed,_ the way a toddler needs a security blanket as armor against nighttime terrors, but that was all. Josh had been her bulwark against loneliness, but not being alone really wasn't the same thing as being together and once she realized that, she knew it was over.

Gradually, as her world expanded from the yard into the hills and woods around her refuge, so too did her soul searching. One day, after she finally managed to climb a slope that had defeated her for weeks, she sat down, winded but triumphant, on a boulder in the clearing and gazed out into the trees below her. It wasn't really that much of a view. Obstructed by firs and foliage, it made a rather small and paltry reward for her efforts. So why had she tried so hard to climb it? She might as well ask why she was so determined to solve her mother's case. Would closure on that chapter really be worth the cost?

In the end, it didn't matter, it was simply who she was. Even as a child, life had always been something to be conquered. "Don't give her any ideas," had been a constant refrain, said half in admiration and half in exasperation, as her parents watched her latch onto each new challenge with the tenacity of a terrier. She needed to know, she needed to do, she needed to finish things. It was what made her such a good cop, but sometime, she admitted to herself, not always the best person. And in the end it had made her a lonely one.

Years ago, frustrated when her initial leads had run out, she had thought she found a way to let her personal tragedy go but she had been fooling herself. She hadn't let go, she had just locked her feelings away somewhere inside herself. But life isn't meant to be lived in a series of compartments and once she turned the key on her mother's murder, she unknowingly locked a part of herself away along with it.

Despite her intimate acquaintance with its costs, the thought of dropping the pursuit of her mother's killer, and her own would be assassin, left her feeling caged and constricted. Unable to sit still, she got up from her perch on the rock and began to pace the width of the clearing. It seemed an insoluble dilemma. In order to be true to herself , she had to pursue the case, but that very pursuit might turn into a maze from which she would never emerge. And she wanted out. Briefly, a voice echoed in her head. _I love you, Kate. _She wanted to hear that again. More importantly, she wanted to be able to say it back.

No matter what she might want, the long road back to herself started in her mother's case and she would have to take the long walk to follow it from there.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: So this chapter is actually why I wrote this in the first place. As much as I loved the swing scene, I felt like it was too pat, that the answers were just too easy, so I wanted to redo it and add just a little bit that I think makes it deeper and more realistic. Anyway, here it is.**

**As always, I don't own Castle (or the song), and I definitely don't own the lines of dialog I have appropriated but I just can't seem to help myself from playing around with them.**

**Also, a little note to all those who favorited or alerted this story, while I'm flattered, I want to remind you that reviews are like chocolate, not necessary, but damn tasty nonetheless.**

* * *

><p>I had a dream last night<p>

And when I opened my eyes

Your shoulder blade, your spine

Were shorelines in the moon light

New worlds for the weary

New lands for the living

I could make it if I tried

I closed my eyes I kept on swimming

(rough seas, they carry me wherever I go)

* * *

><p>Castle was signing books by rote when he heard her voice. He almost didn't look up, sure that the sound was a product of his imagination brought on by the bone deep longing that he carried with him everywhere. But he did look and there she was, thin and still a little drawn, wearing the most uncertain expression he had ever seen on her face.<p>

His heart wanted to give in but his head remembered all of the past months without a word and he struggled to lock his feelings away behind a mask. Not that there was anything he could do right this moment, stuck behind his table with a long line of fans waiting with their books in hand. Perhaps she had known that. Perhaps she was just as afraid as he was and so had chosen this very public place for their reunion.

The next hour passed at a slow crawl as he scribbled his name across cover after cover, a pleasant smile on his face while his stomach churned in his gut. In the first few days after Beckett had dismissed him so summarily from her hospital room, he had been sure she would call anytime and had occupied himself with thoughts of how he would help her through her recovery. He had told himself that she might not remember his declaration to her but even if he couldn't bring himself to tell her his feelings he would have plenty of time to show her while she recuperated. Then as the days stretched into weeks, he excused her silence, unsurprised that Beckett might behave like a wounded animal, crawling away to hide while she licked her wounds, emerging only when she felt strong enough to face the world on her own terms. But then, the weeks turned into months and he had to face the fact that maybe she wasn't coming back, at least not back to him.

There was nothing he could do. He had tried, she had turned away and if he really loved her he needed to respect that decision. If Josh was what she wanted then he needed to leave them alone, not only for their sake but for his own. He thought he had come to terms with that but the very sight of her had torn his heart open all over again.

It was close to an hour before he was finally finished with the book signing. He had not seen Kate again since she showed up in line among his fans and he wondered if she had left as suddenly as she had appeared. Then he left the shop and there she was, waiting in the street, his book held up against her chest like a shield.

Suddenly it was just too much. He could see the future all too clearly. Him following behind her as they settled back into their routine, his hopes rising as their work brought them together, only to be dashed each time Josh reappeared. He could not stay in the wasteland of his unrequited love. It would destroy him in the end so he set an unfeeling mask on his face and walked right past her. It was the hardest thing he had ever done.

"Castle, wait," she called to him before he could make good his escape.

His pain turned to anger. "I did. Three months. You never called."

"Look, I know you're angry," she pleaded.

He turned to face her. "Damn right, I'm angry." Then all the hurt and worry of the past months started to spill out. "I watched you die in that ambulance. Did you know that? Do you know what it's like, watching the life drain out of someone you ..." He caught himself just before he could say too much. "Someone you care about," he said instead.

"I told you, I needed some time," she explained.

"You said a few days."

"Well, I needed more."

"Well, you should have said that," he told her before he gathered his outrage around himself and headed back down the street.

But Kate was nothing if not tenacious and she followed behind him, trying to explain that she had needed some space to work things through for herself. It was that last bit that got to him. For herself. Right.

"Did Josh help you with that?" he asked her bitterly.

Then she said the one thing that could stop him in his tracks. "We broke up."

He watched in shock as she turned and walked away from him, her hurt written on her face for anyone to see. What could he do except for follow her?

They ended up seated, side by side, on two swings in the park across the street. The conversation did not come easily, the past three months and all the things unsaid between them looming like rocks guarding the harbor of their friendship. Finally he couldn't take it any longer.

"So why'd you break up?" he asked.

She didn't answer right away, instead taking a moment to carefully choose her words. "I really, really liked him ... but that wasn't enough. After my mother was killed, something inside me changed. It's like I built up this wall inside. I don't know, I guess it's just that I didn't want to hurt like that again."

When he didn't answer she went on, so slowly it seemed like she was dredging the words up from the very depths of herself. "I know I'm not going to be able to be the kind of person I want to be. I know I'm not gonna ..." she trailed off as he looked over at her, his heart leaping in his chest, but just like him, she chose to sail around the truth. She took a deep breath. "I'm not going to be able to have the kind of relationship I want until that wall comes down. And it's not gonna happen until I put this thing to rest."

He wanted to let it go at that. Wanted to chart this easy course back to the status quo with nothing more on the horizon than the tiny olive branch of hope she was holding out but he couldn't. It wasn't that simple.

"So that's it," he said. "We solve your case and there's your happy ending waiting for you in the distance? Do you even know what happy looks like anymore?" he pushed her.

"I don't know, Castle. I don't know but I ... no, we," she corrected herself, her eyes locked with his. "We have to start somewhere."

And as he looked at her he could see it, little more than a mirage shimmering in the distance, a vision of them together. A new world that was no more than a distant shoreline right now, but out there beckoning to him in the distance and he reached for it.

"Well then I guess we'll just have to find these guys and take him down," he told her.

His words were rewarded with a smile so filled with relief he could have drowned in it. They were so closely tied that no more words were needed. Sure, there were many things left unsaid, and he couldn't have told you whether he was the rescuer or the castaway, but the past few years had given him plenty of experience in these troubled waters and he knew that for now he would go on swimming. No, he thought. They. They would go on swimming.

The End


End file.
